Maryland Supreme Court Provides Guidance Regarding the Statute or Ordinance Rule
Although Maryland does not follow the widely adopted rule of negligence per se, where violation of a statute or regulation can be used to prove that a defendant breached their duty of care, Maryland law does recognize what is commonly known as the “Statute or Ordinance Rule” which provides that the violation of a statute designed to protect a specific class of persons (of which the plaintiff is a member) is evidence of negligence.
In a recently decided opinion, Walton v. Premier Soccer Club, Inc., 490 Md. 204 (2025), the Maryland Supreme Court affirmed the grant of summary judgment in favor of a soccer club, its coach, and county employees, and provided guidance on how the Statute or Ordinance Rule is to be interpreted.
In order to build a prima facie case of negligence based on a violation of a statute, the plaintiff must present evidence that the defendant violated the statute and that the violation of the statute proximately caused the plaintiff’s injury. The longstanding rule applied by Maryland Courts is that proximate causation is established by determining whether the plaintiff is within the class of persons sought to be protected, and the harm suffered is of a kind which the drafters intended the statute to prevent.
In Walton, the plaintiffs believed they satisfied this requirement. Their daughter, then fourteen years old, suffered a traumatic brain injury while practicing for youth soccer at a Baltimore County “Rec Center.” The Waltons argued that the defendants, both the county government and the soccer club, failed to promulgate certain concussion policies to coaches, athletes, and parents The Waltons argued they’d successfully shown evidence of negligence that should have been properly presented to a jury because youth athletes were the group intended to be protected via the promulgation of the concussion policies, and these concussion policies were intended to reduce the incidence of concussions and traumatic brain injuries such as the plaintiff’s daughter suffered.
The Supreme Court, and the Courts below, disagreed. Noting that the goal of concussion policies is not to eliminate concussions but to reduce their incidence, the Court found that the purpose of the statute requiring the distribution of concussion-related informational materials was to reduce the risk of concussions and train parents, coaches, and athletes on how to respond to concussions. Accordingly, the Court found there was no causal link between the failure to distribute this information and the specific concussion alleged here – no reason to suspect that but for the failure to distribute this information, the Walton’s daughter would have avoided her specific injury – even if the materials were designed around training parents and coaches on ways to conduct safer soccer practice.
While this case relates to youth sports, it can be expected that this ruling will have broader relevance to a wide range of potential claims that can be brought by plaintiffs. Plaintiff’s attorneys frequently look for evidence of statutory violations as part of their efforts to establish evidence of negligence, including in the transportation sector, where numerous regulations and statutes govern the “rules of the road.” This case provides a useful example of how plaintiffs cannot simply claim a violation of a statute– they must be able to causally link that violation to the specific injury being claimed. The mere failure of a defendant to provide instructional safety materials or training does not mean that this failure can be used as evidence of negligence unless that failure can be shown in a non-speculative way to have actually caused the plaintiff to be hurt.
Written by Dillon A. Swensen, Esq.
